If "the pen is red" means the pen looks red to me, I agree with that. — Hanover

But the pen looks red to me, too. And given the right filter we might make the red pen look blue... which pen? The red pen. The red pen looks blue. Not Hanover's "The pen that looks red to me looks blue to me".

No, that is our disagreement. We agree we perceive the pen as red. Maybe you think the pen is actually red, but I don't. — Hanover

Ok. So for Hanover, "the pen is red" is not true. I think it is.

I guess it has to be pointed out that "internal" and "external" are not the very same as "subjective" and "objective", and neither is the same as "private" and "public".

Then insofar as we talk about our colour percepts they are not private; — Michael

Yep.

but they are nonetheless percepts and not mind-independent properties of pens. — Michael

Nuh. If it were nothing but a percept, how do you explain our agreement? Perhaps by something like "intersubjective agreement"? Which is just to say that colour also has a public aspect.

And if we agree that stubbing one’s toe is painful and that hugs are not then we agree to something about stubbing one’s toe; but pain is still a mental percept. — Michael

But not only... and so on.

Pens may have atoms that reflect light, but this physical phenomenon simply isn’t what we think or talk about when we think and talk about colours. — Michael

Yep; no more than we are talking about neurological phenomena when we talk about colour. Again, the neurological phenomena in my mind is not the neurological phenomena in yours. Yet we both see the red in the pen.

There is no external red. — Hanover

And yet we agree that the pen is red. So it's not an "internal" red either. The problem then is the demand that it must be one of the other.

We may mistakenly believe that colours are properties of pens, and talk about them as if they are, but we would simply be wrong. The science is clear on this, and no deferment to Wittgenstein can show otherwise. — Michael

Folk would be in error to insist that colours are not properties of pens, too. There are red pens. "The pen is red" is sometimes true. "Property" is itself a problematic term, especially since some folk think all properties are physical.

Yep.

I think his idea derives from opposing subjective and objective, something that isn't all that helpful.

My memory is sufficient. — Michael

. How do you know your memory is sufficient? Because you remember? Somewhat circular, don't you think?

English grammar does not determine what's true and what's false. — Michael

You know Wittgenstein used the term "grammar" more broadly than do grammarians.

And yet we can, and do, talk about pain, which you seem to admit is a private sensation. — Michael

Sure we talk about pain, and so far as we do it is not private.

And you're back to using "red" as an adjective. That pens are red and that pens are mind-independent is not that colours are mind-independent. — Michael

That's not the argument I gave. If we agree that this pen is red, and the others are not, then we agree to something about this pen, and not to something that is only in your mind.

Again, the argument is not that colours are mind-independent. It's that thinking about it in terms of things being mind-dependent or mind-independent is muddled, and can best be replaces by thinking about the actions of embodied people in a shared world.

The difference here is that we have a relatively easy way to "share" color (pointing at some colored object) but not for pain. But this is merely a practical restriction. If you could accurately measure neuron firings in your hand, you could also "share" that pain. — Echarmion

Ok, let's follow through on this.

One possibility would be to recreate the neural pattern in the hand of the victim in your hand. But that could be described as copying the pain from one hand to another - making a new pain. Another possibility might be to connect your nervous system to that of the victim in such a way that you felt the pain in their hand. But consider this carefully. How would you know that you had connected the neurones correctly, so that the level of pain you felt was the same as the level of pain felt by the victim? How could you know you had dialled the pain up or down sufficiently to match their pain? Even if you exactly matched the "neural firings", how could you be sure that the "subjective" result was the same?

In any case, we already compare pains, develop pain scales, say "I feel your pain", and there are empaths who apparently actually feel pain seen in others.

What I think salient is that the way we talk about pain (pleasure, joy...) is different to the way we talk about colour. You can buy a chair of a particular colour but not a chair of a particular pleasure.

Let's go over it again. The world is not fair and just. We can make it more fair and just. Proposing a god who makes the world fair and just both denies the fact of injustice and excuses lack of action.

Is the real world fair and just?

Only if we make it so. — Banno

What might be novel for you here is the idea that faith in god can lead to immoral acts. But if you think on it a bit more, you might see that it is fairly obvious.

What does Wittgenstein's private language argument have to do with anything we're discussing here? — Michael

Quite a bit. If your "mental percepts" are individual, in your mind only and unsharable, then they are tantamount to the private sensation "S" used by Wittgenstein. You might now be calling "red" the percept you yesterday called "green"; you have no way of checking except your own memory.

But of course that is not what happens. You can check the colour of the box over there by looking at the box and by asking your collaborator. The box and the collaborator provide an anchor for your use of the word "red". An anchor that would be unavailable were red no more than something in your mind.

And pain works somewhat differently to colour. There is no equivalent to the box, no something that is available for us both to examine. So we develop pain scales and note the various difficulties they involve.

Take case that the argument here is not, as you suggest, "to prove that colours are not a type of sensation, comparable in kind to pain." Colours can be considered sensations, but not just sensations. The way we talk about colours and pains are different. They involve, in Wittgenstein's terms, different grammars.

...your reasoning seems to amount to nothing more than "pens are red, pens are mind-independent, therefore red is mind-independent." — Michael

Not quite. The argument is more that you and I can both choose the red pen from a container of various other colours, and hence that we agree as to which pen is red, and that hence being red is different to being black or blue - and that this is a difference in the pens, not just or only in your mind. We agree as to which pen is red and so being red involves pens as well as sensations.

I think Witt's point would be that cognition is heavily influenced by language, which in turn reflects history, culture, and biology. — frank

I agree with this, mostly. It is important to keep in mind that it's not language alone, but use that is relevant here. A male bower bird will collect blue things to decorate its bower because the female has a preference for blue items. The male collects blue things in order to get laid. The use is there without the need for language.

Michael might well be able to see different shades of red without having names for them, and demonstrate this by matching colour swatches. But having names for the swatches is also useful.

But the view that all this involves is sensations is oddly passive. One demonstrates this capacity by acting - sorting apples, choosing paints and so on. Seeing colour involves doing things in the world.

colour percepts exist — Michael

All this means is that scientists use that term to talk about seeing colours.

Yea, I don't think that's the whole story. — frank

Yep.

Thanks for the response. You seem to be pretty much agreeing with what I've said.

Cool.

All I want to say is that excluding you there is also God who can read your thoughts and can experience your feelings. So excluding you, it is only God who can judge you properly. I believe in Karma which is imposed by God so your wrong action is not without consequences. — MoK

This deserves its own response. Fear of divine judgement is a way of ensuring your conformity.

Sure not. — MoK

Not sure what this means. Would you be willing to go against divine command, or ought you do as an unjust god demands?

Is it fear of retribution that keeps you from recognising the injustice in the world?

We were not talking about worship. — MoK

Good.

I don't think you have addressed the main line of thought here. That is, that if one thinks the world is just, despite the evidence to the contrary, the result is to excuse oneself from moral responsibility to make the world more just.

That is, it is a theology of moral inaction. As such it is reprehensible.

. Believing that life is fair might make you a terrible person

God can act Unjustly — MoK

Some further problems then: is an unjust god worthy of worship? And ought you do as an unjust god commands?

Pretty much.

...Grannie's fragile china... — Tom Storm

Yes, it closes itself off form further investigation, safely ensconcing the victim in theological cotton wool.

But does not God create humans to have free will? — Richard B

Also, there are unfair things not caused by human action - tsetse fly, child cancer. These are not so easily explained by free will.

That the world must be fair is an act of faith on 's part. Realising it isn't involves denying an omnipotent, omniscient, fair and just god.

MoK might take the argument a step further - as was done by a former prime minister dow nunder - and argue that we needn't, even ought not, worry about famine, climate change or environmental catastrophe, because god ensures the world is fair and just whether we act or not - our actions are not just unnecessary but potentially contrary to the will of the Lord... that we ought not work towards a fair and just world, but instead spend all our spare time happy clapping his praises. :roll:

Commonly... — frank

Yep, a belief we have in common. Cheers.

So you want to demonstrate that god exists, and that therefore the world must be fair and just.

But the world is not fair and just.

Therefore you are mistaken. There is no god.

If god exists, then the world is fair. The world is not fair. Therefore god does not exist.

Hence your arguments are all of them faulty.

In the case of sensation, it's that common biology gives us similar experiences of redness and pain. — frank

Frank, how do you know that we do have "similar experiences of redness and pain"?

How else than by our common, shared talk of what is around us?

So not sophistic enough for your taste?

Why should we care?

At the least, in a philosophy forum, you might provide some sort of support for your beliefs.

Otherwise, we can point out that life is not fair and just, and therefore by reductio, that there is no Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Just God.

Did you come here to prove God does not exist?

So long as a medium exists which allows us to agree on “red” then the similarity/difference between that experience of red holds no value — Mp202020

Cheers. There is a famous argument called the beetle in a box, from Wittgenstein.

What gives our words stability is their place in our common, shared talk of what is around us. One way Wittgenstein showed this by pointing out that if we remove the shared part, as is the case with the beetle in a box, then we have nothing left to tie the word to, and it drops out of consideration.

It's part of what is now called the private language argument. He summarises the idea neatly with "Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you don’t notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you."

The intuition you seem to have hit on in your first few posts here, like your response to , is that for example it wouldn't matter if the colour I see as red is the colour you see as blue, provided that we agreed as to which things to use the word "red" for and which things we would use the word "blue". That is, the words for colour don't drop our of contention in the way the beetle does because we have this shared use.

It seems you've also stepped beyond the mere physiology of colour that a few folk think solves the problem. That we have agreed on the frequency of red, that certain pigments will selectively reflect this frequency, that we can use the word "red" as a noun to talk about such things specifically, all this is irrelevant to the issue you raised.

You've see here the range of contrasting ideas there are around the topic. That's partly because of the spectre of the interminable idealism/realism debate that crops up here every few weeks. You summarised the arguments neatly. The grain of truth in @apokrisis's pragmatic thinking is that neither side of this debate has it quite right. You can see the idealist tendencies in and .

You've wisely stayed out of the conversation about pain. That folk think feeling a pain and seeing red are much the same perhaps shows a lack of reflection.

This is a topic that can easily run to fifty pages with little change or agreement.

The analogy fails.

Pain is like color. — frank

, and . If you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.

The analogy between pain and colour fails because there is a public aspect to colour that it not available for pain.

Being red is possession of the quality plus reference to the word 'red'. The quality is for example a pigment that systematically reflects or scatters wavelength components around 700 nm under ordinary conditions. — jkop

I had a look at the interesting blog you cited previously. I gather you want to differentiate between, on the one hand, things that selectively reflect light of 700nm under white light, and things that reflect light of 700nm when that's all that is available on the other, with the former being called "red things" and the latter being "things that look red". Sounds fine to me.

This seems to be what @Michael is fussing about in talking of nouns and adjectives.

I'm not seeing how it answers the OP.

You are back to using the adjective "red". I am talking about the nouns "red" and "colour". Do you understand the distinction between an adjective and a noun? — Michael

Sure. The relevance of that distinction here, however, escapes me. In both cases we would most simply parse "red" as a predicate: "There is a red ball" becoming "There is an x such that x is a ball and x is red". We can treat these both extensionally, as simply that the bunch of things in the class"red" and the class Ball" is not empty.

Pain and colour are different. I can hand you the pen, but not the pain.

That certainly doesn't make much sense at all. — Michael

I agree. You somewhat missed the point, again. Why should there be a singular thing to which the noun "colour" refers, and which must therefore be either in your head or in your hand? Why shouldn't the word refer to various different things? Indeed, that's how it is used.

I've already agreed with this. — Michael

If we agree that colour is neither completely mind-dependent nor completely mind-independent, then we have made some progress.

But Kant was a philosopher. He was not talking about the world we "live in" — Gnomon

Quite right. :rofl:

Qualities are a queer notion. The idea is something like that there is a something had by, say, all balls, such that being a ball involves having the quality ballness. So we have that this is a ball, that is a ball, one red, the other green, one spherical, the other ovoid, and it's not obvious what these all have in common. So what is it that is had by all balls, and only balls, in virtue of which we might call them "balls"? And the answer is forthcoming - Ballness.

But as such it's pretty vapid.

Family resemblances pretty much put paid to this idea. There need be nothing in common to all balls; rather they might resemble one another in various ways. Like threads in a rope, no individual thread running the full length, yet together they make one rope.

To this we can add Austin's point that there is no reason to supose that the word for red (he used grey) must refer to the very same thing in all instances - why shouldn't we use the same word to refer to different things? The red of a sports car and of a rose and of a face are all very different.

How have I not done so? — apokrisis

I don't know. You asserted that there was a difference, first insisting that the "...account that works for the redness of red has to work just as well as that for the roundness of round, or the pencilness of pencils". Doesn't it? You then said that red was in some way qualitative, while round was quantitative, a contrast I wasn't able to follow. You next said redness was hard, but ballness easy. I'm not so sure of that, not having a clear notion of what "ballness" is. Then you said "Shapes appear to take up a quantity of space and time and materiality in a way that colours don't." I'm not sure about that, since colours do tend to occur together with shapes, and things that are coloured tend to have shape. You then said something about perception being indirect, which Austin showed to be an overgeneralisation.

You didn't lose me, since i couldn't follow you from the getgo.

, are you able to set out the salient way in which "Redness" differs from "ballness"?

I'm not evading. I'm attempting to have you articulate whatever is troubling you in a way that is clear to me. "Quality" is a somewhat archaic word in philosophy, sitting somewhat ambiguously between predicate and property. You seem to think redness and "ballness" differ in an important way. What is the nature of the difference you wish to draw attention to?

And once again, my question to you. Why might this need to be shown for redness as a quality and not ballness? — apokrisis

Why isn't "ballness" (?) a quality? What's a quality, here, anyway? A thing in the world? A concept? It's hard to address a term that has so much baggage attached, but it is not obvious that the case with red is different to the case with "ballness" - the scare quotes are there to note the unusual usage.

Why for instance do people think redness speaks to a qualitative difference while roundness speaks to more a quantitative difference. — apokrisis

They do?

I'm not at all sure what that could mean. I, and I think most folks, do not attach numbers to roundness in any intrinsic way.

But sure, as Austin pointed out, limiting our considerations to sight alone will limit the account. Touch, smell and taste are more "direct" than sight.

And as a general point, philosophers don't know anything not known to other folk. We pretty much agree as to the physiology of sight. So far as we are addressing a philosophical question, it's not an issue of mere physiology.

It's not at all clear how a "dig into the neurobiology that could show how hue discrimination is really just another tool in the armoury of shape perception" answers 'Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?”'. But showing that the word "red" is public, not private, does show that there is more to "red" than what has here been called "mental percepts".

The language game approach fails to engage with what folk are actually interested in when it comes to perception. — apokrisis

If you wish to talk about something else, go right ahead. But don't presume to be talking for everybody.

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020

This question is at least in part about the use of the word "red".

"Visual percepts" is standard terminology in the neuroscience of perception. — Michael

Sure, and in the context of the paper that's fine. But the farther claim that what "red" refers to is a mental percept is fraught with issues.

I've mentioned the implication that when you and I talk about something's being red, we would be talking about quite different things - you of your percept, and me of mine.

But moreover, if "red" refers to something purely mental, how could you be sure that you are using the word correctly? How could you ensure that your use of "red" now matched your use of "red" previously? How could you be sure that your memory is not deceiving you, and what you are now calling "red" is what you previously called "green"?

All the rigmarole of private languages would come in to play. And the answer here is that you can only be sure you are using "red" correctly if other folk agree with your use - if it works to pick out the right pen. Indeed, that is what "using the word correctly" consists in.

The word "red" can be used to refer to an object's disposition to cause certain colour experiences, but they ordinarily refer to those certain colour experiences. Those colour experiences are what we ordinarily understand by colours, especially before we have any understanding of an object having a surface layer of atoms that reflects certain wavelengths of light. — Michael

A pretty clear explanation, showing the underpinning assumption that there must be a "something" to which "red' refers. Why should this be so? Look to the use of the word, to pick out red pens and red faces. That's what counts.

But what should be noted is that those who claim that colours are mind-independent clearly believe that there is a mind-independent world with mind-independent properties, and that sometimes experience is "veridicial", i.e. presents to us the mind-independent nature of the world. Such people should be scientific realists, and accept what physics and neuroscience tell us about the world and perception – and physics and neuroscience tell us that colours are percepts like pain, not mind-independent properties of pens. — Michael

Who, me? But I have been at pains to point out that colour is not mind-independent; nor is it all in the mind. The error here is in thinking things must be one or the other.

Oh, bugger. Wrong connective. I misread it. Fair call.

, Do either of you think that we can make the world fairer? Do you think we ought?

Banno, I think I see what you are saying. — Kizzy

Thanks for the long response, which I will take as you thinking out loud. So many good questions, I'm not going to approach them all. There's a bunch of words relating to these topics. Consider also illusion, delusion, misapprehension, dream, see, perceive, glimpse, notice, and so on. Each with a particular take on what might be happening.